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To Be First or Second: How to Call out a Racist in Real Life

If you wanna understand the content below, check out this video of a woman getting her shit handed to her on a New York subway train after spewing Islamophobic racism on an innocent passenger.

Did that? 3 minutes later? Here are my thoughts:

I love this so much. Called her out and forced her to do the mental exercise to verbalize her racism to everyone.

“Why is he bothering you? Because s/he looks Indian/Muslim, is that what it is?”
“Yes!”
And then you hear it… the passengers around her… scoff at her ignorance, belch out “Oh my gods”.

What a fool.

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Most importantly, I want everyone who watches this to see how it all started. Not the initial abuse, but that it was the first woman who said something about it. Quietly, accented, but she said something…
And that was all it took for this racist to be taken down. So another big props to lady #1 because as a “foreigner” over here, I know what guts that took.

I read something a long time ago about group power dynamics. That it’s actually not in the first person who stands up/agrees/disagrees/whatever, but the SECOND person who follows the first person. That is what causes social ripple effects.

An example that comes to mind is Rosa Parks. She didn’t just randomly refuse to give up her seat. It was in her memory of Emmett Till’s murder three months prior that she refused to get up. And it was in that act that rippled into the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Which rippled into the full on Civil Rights Movement.

Watch this video again and think about this: If that first woman hadn’t said anything, would the second woman have?
We can’t know for certain.
But we *KNOW* with the utmost certainty that the second woman spoke up because the first woman called out the racist. It’s right there on tape.

So if you’re ever in a situation and you’re unsure whether to say something, do it. Chances are in your favor that there are people around to back you up. Actual people, not the Breitbart comments’ section this racist apparently thought were surrounding her on a New York subway.